I’m getting old cars up to Nmra minimum weight specs. Do I include the wheels and trucks in the calculation or should it only be the sprung weight?
keith
Keith,
What matters is total weight with the NMRA specs. Thus, you can use metal wheels and trucks as you mentioned to increase weight. This is very helpful with flatcars and gons.
Thanks
Further to what was mentioned above - include any changes you plan on making, new trucks, metal wheels, Kadee couplers, added detail parts. For passenger cars include interiors, lighting kits, passenger figures, etc. For open cars like hoppers or gons include any loads, also look for places to hide weight, like underneath between the frame parts
Get a scale which can fairly accurately measure things up to a couple pounds, maybe a digital postal scale. Toss the entire car on it and there is your weight, and “bob’s your uncle” as the British say.
Length of car = weight from the NMRA table. Add weight so the whole car, wheels trucks and all weighs that much.
I have an old diet scale that works fine for weighing cars. No need to run out and buy a fancy digital scale.
OXO markets a nice inexpensive scale that’s sold in the kitchen departments of big box and variety stores. If you run a small layout with short trains, weight is less important. For a massive layout like the Tehachapi layour in San Diego, you may want more. The NMRA recommendations are a good starting point to make all of your cars work together.